DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
I see this a lot in political arguments, someone will point out a bad thing the Trump administration is currently doing, and the response will instead argue that the opposition is actually at fault for all the problems. This seems to be more persuasive in leading people to agree with the Trump supporters as well.
e.g.: kids in cages, well “Obama built the cages”; the current ICE innocent man scandal, “Biden let so many criminals in Trump is forced to take extreme actions to get them out and sometimes innocent people will have to be harmed”, the blanket “you criticize Trump but he still won the election which must mean the Democrats are even worse”
Yet even when accurate it doesn’t seem to work the other way around, look at the Afghanistan withdrawal where Trump negotiated the agreement, yet Biden gets 100% of the blame. Now here we are with Trump deporting people with no due process and Biden is still getting 100% of the blame. Why don’t accusations against the right, whether accurate or not, ever seem to land?
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DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
I see this a lot in political arguments, someone will point out a bad thing the Trump administration is currently doing, and the response will instead argue that the opposition is actually at fault for all the problems. This seems to be more persuasive in leading people to agree with the Trump supporters as well.
e.g.: kids in cages, well “Obama built the cages”; the current ICE innocent man scandal, “Biden let so many criminals in Trump is forced to take extreme actions to get them out and sometimes innocent people will have to be harmed”, the blanket “you criticize Trump but he still won the election which must mean the Democrats are even worse”
Yet even when accurate it doesn’t seem to work the other way around, look at the Afghanistan withdrawal where Trump negotiated the agreement, yet Biden gets 100% of the blame. Now here we are with Trump deporting people with no due process and Biden is still getting 100% of the blame. Why don’t accusations against the right, whether accurate or not, ever seem to land?
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Just preemptively attack abusers.
They benefit from trying to play by the normal rules of civil society.
Throw it out.
Just attack them first. They just view your unwillingness to do that as weakness that encourages more abuse and exploitation.
Preemptively disregard anything they say, shift to an attack against them. The more outrageous and hard to objectively analyze the better.
> You know why people don’t like liberals? Cause they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so god damn always?
Part of the issue is Murc’s Law.
Part of the problem is that since liberals still adhere to the rules of democracy and think reality matters and Republicans don’t, they can play us in predictable ways and we fall into the trap over and over. We are Charlie Brown to their Lucy.
False equivalence is a great tool for the right. They have mastered the media messaging and control that lets them create a scenario in which you just need two things to sound equivalent in order to dismiss any accusation thrown at them. Severity or frequently do not matter.
So if they commit 100 crimes and they can point that one person on the left that committed a similar crime, checkmate liberals.
If they commit an egregious act and they can point to one person on the left that committed a similar act, even if less egregious, checkmate liberals.
If the President of the United States and leader of the Republican Party does something wrong and they can find a random person on Twitter with six followers saying something similar, checkmate liberals.
They don’t land because the right doesn’t actually care about any of this stuff. They don’t care about kids in cages, regardless of who built the cages, they don’t care about innocent immigrants caught up in the sweeps because they don’t agree with the concept of innocent immigrants, they don’t care about responsibility for the Afghan withdrawal because they don’t care about Marines (or Afghanis, lol) dying, etc, etc.
Humor and comedy.
Think about the spaces that they cant overwhelm with their bullshit.
Think about how the “weird” thing hit. They cant stomach being the “out group.” They believe their ideals are what Americans want. So laughing at their ridiculous ideas is a trigger.
Whenever anybody says “Trump is just like us” I just laugh and make a joke about private airplanes. “So does that mean I could borrow your private jet for a day?”
I don’t entertain the sea lioning or gish gallop unless I’m bored. I keep them on topic and won’t budge until they answer the question. I’ll point out ways in which their response is insufficient. When it’s someone who’s clearly acting in bad faith, I don’t hesitate to put down the entire group they belong to without directly name calling. I make sure to place blame on Republicans/GOP and not solely on Trump or Musk. If I’m not in the mood for an exchange, I report, block, and move on.
I was in contact with a relative, and an old family friend, both cult members, all through the past decade until fairly recently: what finally made me give up was that they’d comment on my posts, or on something I shared that was factual, but they never actually read the information, watched the video, or wanted to discuss the facts. They both admitted that they didn’t want to hear or read anything counter to the views they already have (which are basically Faux Entertainment talking points). I feel helpless against their closed minds, and have admitted defeat in my efforts to keep the lines of communication open.
We keep engaging with the idea that they are victims. That’s the reason it doesn’t work.
I would counter like this: for the “innocent man” thing:
Really, until habeas corpus in reinstated it would be pretty dang hard to be a conservative and try to debate anyone to defend trump, and we should all use that difficulty to make their lives maximally difficult.
Much of the right is simply not interested in anything but “winning” in an us vs. them manner. Trying to appeal to them as citizen to citizen, fellow rational human being, equal under the law and so forth doesn’t work because you’re not “real Americans” to them. It’s a friend/enemy based fascist politics. Facts don’t matter, reason doesn’t matter, it’s just a simple us vs. them game.
Not recognizing that is what allows them to get further than they should because people keep trying to treat them as playing by the norms and rules of civil society.
The response should not be to the right, it should be drawing a distinction between what the alt-right calls “normies” and the right. Normies need to be given good reasons not to join the ranks of the right, without us simply agreeing with the right on things they’re wrong about. Many of them don’t have much contact with people that can achieve that, and it’s clear that the democratic party’s leadership hasn’t been reckoning with demographic shifts going against what they anticipated.
There are avenues to reaching those people. Many did vote for Trump based more on economic concerns and misguided belief in his promises in that domain. They expected something closer to his first term. They wanted no new wars, understandably after our misadventures in the middle east. The Trump admin’s actual agenda is not what many of them want, he has no “mandate”. Yes, it’s disturbing that they are either ignorant of or lack concern for the darker elements of MAGA, but just scolding them for that isn’t a successful strategy.
There is real racism, misogyny, fascist ideology amongst Trump’s support base. That doesn’t mean that democrats lost only for those sorts of reasons. Democrats often don’t behave as if their own rhetoric is true, they drop progressive issues chasing an elusive and shrinking middle, they aren’t adapting at all to rising “populist” sentiments, and of course they have a general problem with an old and out of touch leadership level that seems more committed to what seems to be quite literally a seniority system than running the best candidates.
Defending democrats is rough, but while republicans are in power they can’t blame everything on the democrats, so it needs to be emphasized to people how their lives are being actively made worse by this administration. They’d be better off helping us improve the democratic party than sacrificing themselves for the sake of the delusions of grandeur that are all the Trump admin has to offer.
You do the same thing you do with an abuser in a domestic situation. You do everything you can to get out safely and keep them away from you.
You know all those highway overpasses named after dead cops? Most of those guys died in domestic violence situations. Abusers are incredibly dangerous, far more than any other kind of criminal. And you bet your ass that most of these types on the right are either domestic abusers or they aspire to be but they don’t have partners.
The difference is, democratic voters look at facts and if their guy is guilty, they want him taken down because it’s the right thing to do. So it’s a morality issue for democrats, and a win by any means necessary for conservatives, even if it’s lying or immoral.
> due process
You believe there is no due process.
This isn’t actually the case. The people who are being deported, are being verified they are here illegally, or they have a criminal record (prior convictions). Once either is established, due process is satisfied.
The left maintains that an immigration judge must be involved in a status hearing and they must rule on the immigrants status. This just isn’t true. This is because of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Do you disagree with it? Sure. To some extent so do I. But arguing that due process is being evaded is just not true, in my opinion.
Obama built the cages, and he was criticized for it. Just because you were busy criticizing him for his tan suit doesn’t mean other people weren’t going after him for his rampant use of drones, his immigration policy, and his bailout of the wealthy leaving average Americans to face ruin.
I don’t vote Democrat because they are my heroes. You vote to set the stage for the coming politics. You don’t vote because it will somehow solve everything.
But overall, criticisms of the right never land because they don’t make arguments in good faith. They are just making talking points.
They aren’t worth engaging with.
personally I am just biding my time until their brains are thoroughly fried by AI, MAHA supplement overdoses, and worms from their unregulated dairy products. they are like 3 months from rejecting the science about asbestos and deliberately snorting it to own the libs. then we can give them supersoakers filled with their own urine and put them into Safe Zoos for Humans where they can run around shooting each other because they’re convinced it’s WW3.
>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
>yet Biden gets 100% of the blame
Is there anybody who actually believes this outside the most brain broken MAGA member? I have not seen anyone who seems to believe Biden is responsible for deporting the guy with protected status or any of the other people. I don’t even think this is a popular talking point on the right as they are/were taking credit for it, so blaming Biden would be going against the party line.
the right does not adhere to reality so there is no point trying to show them the problem with their logic. even if you “win” the argument they will not suddenly start voting democratic. there is no point engaging with them; you are wasting your breath.
the only people who really matter are the moderates and centrists. they are the ones you need to present your case to. why democratic leadership is better for their lives. how much they are missing out when republican leadership is making the decisions.
MAGA is a cult. I guess we need to start studying how to get people out of cults.
Conservatives are world class at starving authority out of respect.
Not starving out a sense of respect. Starving them out of respect until the point they can’t use their authority anymore, unless to make their situation worse by acting angry.
Why does it work? Because they know what we respect, and they can hurt OUR morale by attacking their political opponent.
How many times have you heard a liberal say “I don’t like Clinton/obama/biden BUT…
That liberal just gave something up that was very useful: an admission they don’t respect the Democrat either.
Republicans don’t need to respect their leader. They just need to not respect their philosophical rival.
So if you were a voter, which choice will keep the tribe together?
Anyone see my point?
It’s important to call them out when they use these tactics.
> Why don’t accusations against the right, whether accurate or not, ever seem to land?
Because they aren’t beholden to reality. They ignore or sometime refuse the facts.
I’ve seen it recently in those who deny that defensive gun use exists.
They prefer the high of “righteous” outrage and self-reflecting shame is the opposite of that, so they will put ALL of their effort to staying high.